Once nubile, pulchritudinous body,
Now lies shrunken, pale.
Fastidious creation now seems shoddy,
Bare, without an ornate shell.
You say, nothing left, it is dead.
I ask, is it over indeed?
Your answer, Yes! Don’t bang head.
I look, sad, your eyes bleed.
Banjara, they say, the Atman. (Banjara=Sojourner, Atman=Soul)
It comes and goes, ever ditches.
Never stays, an eternal packman,
Beholds the world, and teaches.
Teaches itself, alone and isolated,
Talks, Listens, Smells, Hears, and Senses,
the bodies which it inhabits, undated,
Connecting the experience web-branches.
Did that Banjara ditch her? Again?
Collected episodes and vanished!
The life was just a play, in vain?
Whose reel is stored, to be screened,
inside the cocoon of the Corpse,
not of body, but of the Soul.
Illustration by P. Suma
Article 19 